Cryptic, after playing STO for a few months now, I have a few suggestions that I believe would make STO a better game. The most important one involves cannon balance. I love cannons, but they are far to effective to be anything but the must have weapons. As it stands now, all a cannon heavy ship has to do is either park it's nose or go in at 1/4 thrusters and blast away. This is boring, and in a tactical game, serves no purpose. The two things I suggest to bring improvements to cannons in STO are:

#1. Adjust the cannon power ratios. My suggested changes are.

Dual Heavy Cannons-20 weapon power per salvo.

Dual Cannons-15 weapon power per salvo.

Cannons-10 weapon power per salvo.

Turrets-7 weapon power per salvo.

These changes alone will require cannon users to adjust their setups to various other weapon types instead of all duals/heavies front.

#2. Give cannons bonuses to power usage if the player is using thrusters. For example.

Full thrusters-75% bonus to weapon power usage.
3/4 thrusters-50% bonus to weapon power usage.
1/2 thrusters-25% bonus to weapon power usage.
1/4 thrusts-10% bonus to weapon power usage.

So the faster the player is moving with thrusters the less weapon power it takes to fire cannons. You could also provide a slight kinetic damage bonus for full thrusters and cannons.

I am interested on hearing feedback on these ideas. I love STO and want to see it become a better game. Thanks.

No, the problem is with retarded AI. You may as well penalise beam broadsides mindlessly circling. I suggest you go and try PVP and see how "awesome" a 45 degree arc is.

What they need to do is make speed give a large defence bonus and reduce escort shield effectiveness so that engines becomes the dump stat and not shields.

I am talking pvp and pve. Consider that I played Klingon up to Captain, this is not the only issue but cannons are still something I would like to see fixed. I would also like to see beam weapons have a chance of having a grazing shot. A grazing shot would consist of half damage, similar to a miss. The faster your target is moving the more likely you get a grazing shot.

They can start nerfing when they get a respec in place. Until then, don't touch anything.

Not rerolling another admiral because the only points I put in weapons were cannons

So stop all balancing so you can respec? Give me a break. There is no reasons cannons cannot be just as powerful with these changes as they are now. Just requires actual tactical changes to be just as effective.

There is no reasons cannons cannot be just as powerful with these changes as they are now. Just requires actual tactical changes to be just as effective.

Except you are going about it bass ackwards. You shouldn't want to sit still in an escort because you will get hit and die. Not because running your engines at full throttle magically makes your cannons use less energy.

And the problem still is retarded AI. In PvP the problem is blobbing which wouldn't be solved by these changes, they would just encourage people to switch to beams instead.

Personally I think that in the end game content cannons are going to become unappealing very quickly because of the limited arc limiting spreading incoming damage over shield sectors.

Except you are going about it bass ackwards. You shouldn't want to sit still in an escort because you will get hit and die. Not because running your engines at full throttle magically makes your cannons use less energy.

And the problem still is retarded AI. In PvP the problem is blobbing which wouldn't be solved by these changes, they would just encourage people to switch to beams instead.

Personally I think that in the end game content cannons are going to become unappealing very quickly because of the limited arc limiting spreading incoming damage over shield sectors.

You are mistaken. In endgame, cannons are exclusively the most powerful weapon in the game. In order to make cannons effective you have to have something that balances out the firepower. Using less energy by using thruster can be explained as the heat generated by the engines is being output through the cannons or something along those lines. The arc on a cannon is never an issue considering they are almost always on the ships with the best agility.